Abstract
Modern consumers turn to foods marketed as ‘natural/organic’ in their pursuit of healthier options. However, research that links such claims made on pack with improved nutritional composition is limited. The current analysis used data from all packaged foods available in the Hellenic Food Thesaurus (n = 4002), sold in Greece from 09/2020 to 01/2021, to map the prevalence of packaged foods sold under a ‘natural/organic’ claim and to compare their nutritional composition against food group matched conventional counterparts. Statistical analysis was carried out using IBM SPSS Statistics®. Overall, ‘free from’ was the most commonly used claim (12.3%), followed by ‘natural/pure’ (9.1%), ‘fresh’ (4.6%), and ‘bio/organic’ (3.3%). Statistically significant differences between the nutritional composition of natural/organic and conventional foods were only found in 5 out of the 13 food categories and in 9 out of 39 subcategories. Being labelled as natural/organic was linked to improved nutritional composition for prepared foods and yogurts, while for breakfast cereal, there was a mixed effect with lower carbohydrate content but higher energy and fat content. Jams labelled as natural/organic had higher energy and total sugar content. Overall, evidence of an association between being labelled as natural/organic and having an improved nutritional composition was extremely rare.
Highlights
Front-of-pack (FoP) visual and verbal claims play a critical role in capturing consumers’ attention, allowing them to quickly judge which product fits their diet and lifestyle needs [1,2]
The Hellenic Food Thesaurus (HelTH), the Branded Food Composition Database of the Agricultural University of Athens, was used for data extraction
Claims for naturality were grouped into ‘free from’ claims (n = 471), ‘natural/pure’ (n = 349), or ‘fresh’ (n = 177), and other claims were categorized as a product being either biological/organic (n = 127) or genetically modified organisms (GMO)-free (n = 47)
Summary
Front-of-pack (FoP) visual and verbal claims play a critical role in capturing consumers’ attention, allowing them to quickly judge which product fits their diet and lifestyle needs [1,2]. Claims made on pack aimed to link a food’s composition to specific health effects. Is increasingly seen on packaged foods, potentially as part of a general marketing strategy called the ‘health halo’ effect [3,4]. The regulations of Nutrition and Health claims made on packaged products have been the topic of legislative and scientific discussion for nearly three decades [8,9], the proliferation of marketing strategies and venues, regulating an ever-expanding food labelling environment, requires constant vigilance [10] in order to ensure that any claim made on pack is not misleading and is substantiated by generally accepted scientific data [11]. In addition to functional foods (foods with specific health and nutrition claims), the past 5 years have seen an increase in consumer demand for natural and organic foods
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